"Real-World AJAX" seminar series (www.ajaxseminar.com) speaker line up for the March 13, 2006 event in New York City announced today.

"Led by The Father of 'AJAX' himself, the charismatic Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path, "Real-World AJAX" has one overriding organizing principle: its aim is to make sure that delegates fortunate enough to secure themselves a place -before all seats are sold out- will leave the seminar with a sufficient grasp of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML to enable them to build their first AJAX application on their own when they get back to their office," said Jeremy Geelan, conference chair and editorial director of SYS-CON Media. "As if the participation in this content-rich day of the man who first coined "AJAX" weren't enough, "Real-World AJAX" also offers insights from the leading authorities on AJAX technology."

The following 'AJAX rock stars' are also on the teaching faculty: 

David Heinemeier Hansson, The Creator of Rails (New York)
Scott Dietzen, President & CTO of Zimbra, A Father of J2EE (New York)
Adam Bosworth, A Father of XML and the Creator MS Access (San Jose)
Paul Rademacher, The Creator of HousingMaps.com (San Jose)

Hansson will give a unique never-heard-before session on "AJAX on Rails" - and these pioneers will be complemented by hands-on teaching from the following top AJAX experts in the world:

Bill Scott, AJAX Evangelist of Yahoo!
Christian Cantrell, AJAX-Flash Integration Guru, Adobe
Jouk Pleiter, Co-Founder, CEO of Backbase
Kevin Hakman, Co-Founder, TIBCO Software
Rob Gonda, Editor-in-Chief of AJAX Developer's Journal
Sahil Malik, telerik Tech Evangelist, Bestselling Book Author
Ross Dargahi, Co-founder and VP of Engineering, Zimbra
Dave Crane, Bestselling AJAX book author on "AJAX Power Panel"
Dion Hinchcliffe, Editor-in-Chief of Web 2.0 Journal on "AJAX Power Panel"

There will be a total of 15 distinguished speakers and panelists, presenting 11 sessions on Monday, March 13, 2006 in New York City and on Monday, April 24, 2006 in San Jose. Both events are limited to 200 on-site delegates and the "on-demand" education opportunity of the seminars will also be available for $695 after these live events take place.

"Real-Wold AJAX" seminar series is sponsored by the world's leading AJAX technology providers. The New York City event is sponsored by Adobe, telerik, Backbase, and Tibco/Perficient. The San Jose event is sponsored by Adobe, Microsoft, Backbase, and Tibco/Perficient. Manning Publications has been named the seminar's book publisher sponsor, presenting Dave Crane's bestselling book, Ajax in Action.

The bios of the seminar presenters, whose names were announced earlier today, are as follows:

Jesse James Garrett (New York / San Jose)
Father of "AJAX" Who Coined the Term in 2005
Jesse James Garrett is the Director of User Experience Strategy and a founding partner of Adaptive Path, the world's premier user experience consulting company. He is author of The Elements of User Experience (New Riders), and is recognized as a pioneer in the field of information architecture. Jesse's clients include AT&T, Intel, Crayola, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and National Public Radio. Since starting in the Internet industry in 1995, Jesse has had a hands-on role in almost every aspect of Web development, from interface design and programming to content development and high-level strategy. Today, information architects around the world depend on the tools and concepts he has developed, including the widely acclaimed "Elements of User Experience" model. He is co-founder of the Information Architecture Institute, the only professional organization dedicated to information architecture. He is also a frequent speaker and writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including New Architect, Digital Web, and Boxes and Arrows.

Jesse James Garrett (New York / San Jose)
Father of "AJAX" Who Coined the Term in 2005
Jesse James Garrett is the Director of User Experience Strategy and a founding partner of Adaptive Path, the world's premier user experience consulting company. He is author of The Elements of User Experience (New Riders), and is recognized as a pioneer in the field of information architecture. Jesse's clients include AT&T, Intel, Crayola, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and National Public Radio. Since starting in the Internet industry in 1995, Jesse has had a hands-on role in almost every aspect of Web development, from interface design and programming to content development and high-level strategy. Today, information architects around the world depend on the tools and concepts he has developed, including the widely acclaimed "Elements of User Experience" model. He is co-founder of the Information Architecture Institute, the only professional organization dedicated to information architecture. He is also a frequent speaker and writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including New Architect, Digital Web, and Boxes and Arrows.

Scott Dietzen (New York)
One of the Fathers of WebLogic and J2EE
Ph.D., President and CTO, Zimbra
Prior to Zimbra, Scott was CTO of BEA Systems where he was the principal architect of the technology strategy for the WebLogic, which drove the company from $61 million in revenue for the year prior to WebLogic's acquisition to over $1 billion. He was also one of BEA's top spokespersons. He is widely credited with helping put together the J2EE standard, launching the Web application server category, launching the Java Community Process, and driving the web services collaboration with Microsoft and IBM. Prior to WebLogic, Scott was Principal Technologist for Transarc (acquired by IBM), a developer of distributed transaction and information sharing systems. In addition to working on Internet infrastructure since 1991, Scott has managed teams focused on sales, marketing, product management, and standards. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Bill Scott (New York)
AJAX Evangelist of Yahoo!
Bill Scott, one of the top AJAX experts in the country, is an Interaction Designer and Ajax Evangelist at Yahoo! He is part of the newly formed Design and Practices Team working with teams throughout Yahoo! to create a rich experience on the web. Before joining Yahoo! Bill founded the User Experience Team at Sabre Airline Solutions, part of Sabre Holdings. During that stint he also co-founded Rico, an open source JavaScript framework for creating Ajax & DHTML web applications. Over the past 20 years Bill has been involved in designing and creating user interfaces for video games, military war games, 3d graphics, oil and gas research, software development environments, supply chain planning, and various other scientific and business domains. He posts his musings about user experience on his blog.

David Heinemeier Hansson (New York)
Creator of Ruby on Rails
US-based since November, David Heinemeier Hansson is the development lead of Rails, also known as Ruby on Rails, which the official Ruby on Rails website irreverently describes as "a full-stack, open-source web framework in Ruby for writing real-world applications with joy and less code than most frameworks spend doing XML sit-ups." He has had help from a lot of contributors. David is the creator of applications like Instiki, Basecamp, and Ta-da, and has now joined the Chicago-based team of 37signals.com, a privately-held company founded in 1999 and committed to building the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary. David will give his first presentation on “AJAX in Rails” at the “Real-World AJAX” one-day seminar.

Adam Bosworth (San Jose)
Vice President of Engineering, Google
One of the Fathers of XML and the Creator of MS Access
Adam Bosworth is Vice President of Engineering, Google. He joined Google in 2005 from BEA Systems, where he was Chief Architect & Senior VP of Advanced Development. Prior to joining BEA, Bosworth co-founded Crossgain, a software development firm acquired by BEA. Known as one of the pioneers of XML, he previously held various senior management positions at Microsoft, including General Manager of the WebData group, a team focused on defining and driving XML strategy. While at Microsoft he was also responsible for designing and delivering the Microsoft Access PC Database product and assembling and driving the team that developed the HTML engine of Internet Explorer 4.0.

Rob Gonda (New York / San Jose)
Bestselling AJAX Author, CTO, iChameleon Group
Editor-in-Chief, AJAX Developer's Journal
Rob Gonda, newly appointed at the helm of SYS-CON Media's AJAX Developer's Journal, is the CTO for iChameleon Group. He is an Advanced Certified Coldfusion Developer, holds a BS in computer science and engineering and an MBA with a specialization in entrepreneurship. He recently wrote a two-part feature article on AJAX for ColdFusion Developer's Journal that in one month became the most-read article in the magazine's history.

Dion Hinchcliffe (New York / San Jose)
Cofounder & CTO, Sphere of Influence Inc.
Editor-in-Chief, Web 2.0 Journal
Dion Hinchcliffe, newly appointed Editor-in-Chief of SYS-CON's pioneering Web 2.0 Journal, is cofounder and chief technology officer for the enterprise architecture firm Sphere of Influence Inc., in McLean, Virginia. A veteran of software development, Dion works with leading-edge technologies to accelerate project schedules and raise the bar for software quality. He is highly experienced with enterprise technologies and he designs, consults, and writes prolifically. Dion actively consults with enterprise IT clients in the federal government and Fortune 1000. He is a frequent speaker on AJAX, Web 2.0 and SOA and is currently the top-read SYS-CON.com blogger.

Jeremy Geelan (New York / San Jose)
Group Publisher & Editorial Director, SYS-CON Media
Jeremy Geelan is group publisher and editorial director of SYS-CON Media, and is responsible for all print titles and online i-technology portals for the firm. He regularly hosts SYS-CON.TV, is executive producer of the "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" iTV series, and represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. His i-Technology Blog is at jeremy.linuxworld.com and he is Conference Chair of the upcoming iTVcon - "Internet TV Conference & Expo 2006".

Ross Dargahi (New York)
Well-known AJAX Evangelist
Co-founder and VP of Engineering, Zimbra
Ross Dargahi, a co-founder of Zimbra, is presently the company's VP of Engineering. Prior to Zimbra, he was Director of Engineering and Director of Product Management with the Messaging Products Group at Openwave Systems - where he built and led the engineering team that designed and architected large-scale messaging subsystems and was responsible for unified messaging, multimedia messaging (MMS), and voicemail. Ross joined Openwave as part of the 1999 acquisition of Onebox where he was a founding engineer and senior architect. Prior to Onebox, Ross was at Sun Microsystems' JavaSoft division where he was a lead engineer with the Java Server Group responsible for network computer and embedded server products.

Dave Crane (New York / San Jose)
Co-author of Bestselling AJAX Book 'Ajax in Action'
Dave will autograph his bestselling book for all delegates!
Dave Crane is senior developer and architect for Historic Futures Ltd., a UK firm specialising in web-based supply chain management solutions. He is also lead author of the bestselling 'Ajax in Action', and has been using the technologies that we now know as Ajax in production for several years. He has worked extensively in the IT industry over the last ten years, in areas as diverse as home automation, finance and national policy planning, for companies ranging from start-ups to FTSE 100 market leaders, using technologies as diverse as J2EE, Python, Ruby, PHP, Linux and .NET. He holds degrees in Environmental Science, Parallel Computing, and a Ph.D. in simulation modelling and philosophy. He is active as a writer, trainer and mentor in the Ajax community.

Christian Cantrell (New York / San Jose)
Coauthor of JavaScript/Flash Integration Kit
AJAX/Flash Integration Guru
Christian Cantrell is a Product Manager for Developer Relations with Adobe and a big fan of AJAX. He has been developing large-scale, web-based applications in ColdFusion, Java, JSP, and Flash for more than six years. He is the author of numerous tutorials and white papers, and is coauthor of Flash Enabled: Flash Design & Development for Devices as well as the JavaScript/Flash Integration Kit. Christian is a leading expert on AJAX to Flash integration.

Sahil Malik (New York)
telerik Tech Evangelist, Microsoft MVP
Author of Bestselling ADO.NET 2.0 book
Sahil Malik is an Independent Consultant, Trainer and Mentor in various Microsoft Technologies and has been closely involved with telerik as a technology strategist. He has worked for many large clients across the globe including a good deal of Fortune 100 companies and US government organizations. He is currently leading the office of Emerging Technologies at a prominent government office where he is in charge of reviewing, assessing and recommending various technologies to support the organization. Malik frequently speaks on a variety of .NET related topics at local user group meetings and industry events. For his community involvement and contribution, he has been awarded the Microsoft MVP award. He can be reached at www.winsmarts.com.

Jouk Pleiter (New York / San Jose)
Co-Founder & CEO of Backbase
Jouk Pleiter is the CEO of Backbase, a leader in the field of Rich Internet Applications and AJAX development software. Backbase's clients include ING, ABN AMRO, TNT, KPN, Comsys and Heineken. Backbase operates globally with offices in San Mateo (North America) and Amsterdam (Europe). Since 1995, Jouk has been an entrepreneur: he founded three successful Software companies. Prior to Backbase, Jouk was part of the founding team at the web content management company Tridion, where he led the product management operations, and was driving the company s efforts to become a leader in the European WCM software market. Jouk previously was part of the founding team at the Interactive Agency Twinspark where he grew the company to a leading market position in Europe and was instrumental in the sale of Twinspark to Agency.com. He has an MBA degree from the University of Groningen.

Kevin Hakman (New York / San Jose)
Co-Founder TIBCO General Interface, TIBCO Software
Kevin Hakman is Co-founder, TIBCO General Interface, TIBCO Software Inc. Prior to TIBCO General Interface, he was the co-founder of Versalent Inc. a leading provider of enterprise client technology. Prior to Versalent, he founded a series of successful emerging Internet technology and ecommerce ventures. He has also written for AJAX Developer's Journal, eBusiness Journal and HotWired.